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Metric played second on the main stage yesterday at the Buzz Beach Ball; I was excited to see them, but was surrounded by a number of people who were up front because they wanted to stake out places for later acts (presumably Foster the People, though there was one kid who was very probably half my age, literally, wearing Ray Bans and a 40 Oz. to Freedom t-shirt [Sublime with Rome was the headlining act]). Plenty of said people were teenagers, many of whom I suspect were at their first concert, or at least their first festival. (Case in point, the kid in front of me who kept hitting me with his backpack.) Metric played a stripped-down version of "Gimme Sympathy" as a "sing-along" for their closer, and I heard one teenager snark, "We can't sing along to a song we don't know." So I sang louder and more enthusiastically, of course.

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I couldn't get the Kansas Public Radio website to load this morning, so I thought I'd see how well Pandora's classical music stations match my tastes. "Oh look," I thought when perusing the possibilities, "there's a 20th century classical station!" This pleased me. I decided to try it. Many good things! Barber and Copland and Shostakovich! Yo Yo Ma and Rostropovich! Nice.

However. Perhaps my definition of what constitutes "classical" music (or, um, 20th century) is too narrow? But here are some of the things it played for me that made me raise an eyebrow and/or give it the ol' thumbs down:

Lots of stuff from film scores. Which, okay, I get that that line can be blurry sometimes. And maybe I'm just being too picky. But if I'm in the mood for 20th century classical music, I tend to be looking for the stuff that's... moody, let's say. (I like dissonance. And cellos.) I am not looking to hear the theme from Forrest Gump.

"New Age" pianists like Jim Brickman. Meh.

String quartet arrangements of pop songs. Sometimes fun! Again, not what I'm in the mood for!

Bach.

Beethoven (though the excerpt from the 9th Symphony it gave me fit what I was hoping for).

Currently playing: Kashmir, which sounds basically like the original except that the vox are covered by a string quartet. I... um... whut?

It seems like I have better luck staying within genre when I've started from an artist. I wonder if that helps b/c it gives the algorithm a more distinct starting point, or if fewer people listen to the classical stations, so the sorting is less refined there? I should try starting with Barber's Prayers of Kierkegaard and see what it does with that. :D

Final note: good grief, how many people have recorded Satie's Gymnopedie for Piano No. 1? And how many times a day does Pandora think I really need to hear it?

Current Mood: silly

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Oddly enough, I don't have as vivid memories of this one as I do of the previous. I went with T and hikerbeth; I remember it was not too cold yet, so I wore my gray hoodie for the standing-in-line-outside time and tied it around my waist during the concert. The concert itself was definitely a good time, at any rate, though!

This concert happened during my second semester of college. I was in Boston; my boyfriend at the time was at RPI in Troy, NY, which is how I ended up at this show. It was a beautiful spring day; we sat outside in t-shirts doing chalk drawings on the sidewalk, and then that night we went to the concert. Pleasant memory. :)

This day/week/semester has turned my brain to mush. Have some random thoughts on this year's BPAL Yule offerings. I'm not looking at the Frankenstein scents here, 'cause I can't even entirely process them (though I did order two decants, one for me and one for Himself). Oh, and I had never read the Little Matchstick Girl before last night. Ye gods. Good on Beth for making it through that! I'm not going there right now.

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I went to the farmer's market on Saturday, and it's possible I went a little bit overboard, particularly given that we leave for New England Friday morning, but eeee fresh produce! This is the first time I've gone to actually buy stuff (thekingt and I went back in April to see what was what, basically, but then I never went back), and while I can't hold it against myself that I haven't been more often, since getting my butt out of bed early on a Saturday is difficult indeed, I'm definitely keen to go again!

First things first, though--gotta use up all the stuff I bought! Last night I made eggplant parmesan using the 1973-vintage Vegetarian Epicure (I've only made a handful of the book's recipes, but it's entertaining as a historical artifact, if nothing else). I think it turned out deliciously, but the prep is a bit more than I usually care for in the sense that it uses approximately a million dishes (lack of dishwasher meh) and I have a couple of good burns on my fingers (now we're cooking with ADHD!), so... maybe just a special-occasion-type meal.

But what I really wanted to crow about is the zucchini bread I made. To my surprise, neither the Vegetarian Epicure nor the Joy of Cooking had a sweet zucchini bread recipe (the latter has a zucchini cheddar bread recipe, but I was definitely wanting sweet over savory), so rather than hunt through my other cookbooks, I went online and ended up at Emeril's recipe. I omitted the nuts, used lime zest instead of lemon zest since that's what I had handy, and used one cup of all-purpose flour plus 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour. Last night I pulled it out of the oven and pretty much headed straight to bed, so I didn't get to taste it until breakfast this morning.

YUM. Oh my, yes. That will do nicely. Highly, highly recommend!

Current Mood: mellow

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A story in texts... (well, that's what it was supposed to be when I started out, but then I decided you all needed to know more about the plot to understand where I was coming from, and it just kinda snowballed from there...)

But first, the background: every year our office does an office retreat at a lovely place in a nearby town. We do work-related stuff, including preparing for our craziest day of the year, the day fall grades are due--we try to process them as quickly as possible so we can catch faculty before they leave for the holidays, and so we can get fall graduates' degrees posted ASAP, again, just in case we need to snag faculty for questions before they leave. We have that day scheduled hour by hour, and we stay late that night to get everything done. We also do some holiday stuff at our retreat, though (other WU people--this doesn't leave this room!), including a holiday movie. Two years ago we watched Christmas Do-Over, which was not my cup of tea in general (it was an ABC Family made-for-TV movie), but still kind of sweet. Last year we watched Snow Buddies, which, again, not necessarily my thing, but it was filled with puppies, so I was golden. This year, however, we watched The Search for Santa Paws, and I was fucking traumatized!